Faith (And More)

Thanks to those of you who commented on the faith question post. Your responses definitely line up with what I've been thinking about lately.
Just for a little background, I decided to blog about faith because of a discussion we had here over dinner. I've also been reading a bit about faith in Priests for the Third Millenium and have been thinking about it on off for a little while.

So, what is faith? It's a tough question because "faith" is a hard word to define. When people say, "You have to have faith," I think that what they really mean to say is, "Trust in God." Is it the same thing? I don't think so. Trust seems to be a belief that you can rely on something or someone because it has been reliable. We trust that the sun will rise tomorrow morning because it has done that for quite a long time. I think faith is a deeper thing.

One thing that came up in the comments here and in person is that faith involves believing in something that you cannot see or prove. I think that is one major component. Let's just have it out:

I believe that faith is a supernatural knowledge of God.

This isn't close to being slightly perfect, I know. I'm just trying to think "out loud."
Let's pick that apart:

1. Faith is supernatural. That means that it is not something that we can come to using only human reason. Yes, our reason can explore and clarify faith, but the fundamental belief in God is from Him. It is not of this world.

2. It is knowledge. Faith is more than trust because it is not based on experience or probablility. We trust that the sun will rise tomorrow and it most likely will; but we know that God will love us tomorrow. This cannot be explained by science or logic.

Basically the idea is that we cannot prove that God exists in any scientific way, but we know that He is. Wars, natural disasters, hate, death - it's all in the world and it's not going away, but we still know that God loves us and, even now, He is victorious.

I like the idea of faith being a virtue because: One, it means that it takes practice and, two, it is not something that we come up with on our own. Faith is a gift from God and the best way to get something from God is to ask for it.

Now please, comment away!